Winnie Everlasting
by WizMonCruWil
Summary: Whew! I'm on a roll today! I have always wanted to write about the scenario if Winnie HAD taken a drink from the spring. This one is just a cute, short little piece! Please, enjoy!
1. Chapter 1: Live Forever to Really Live

**Chapter 1: Live Forever to Really Live**

When Winnie Foster thought back on it now, the decision was easier than she had imagined it would be.

Oh, she had vacillated back and forth between being a teenager until eternity or growing old. But, when her parents had insisted that she had to go to boarding school because of her going astray with the Tucks, Winnie realized that immortality was her only shot at freedom.

She couldn't wait two years so that she was the same age as Jesse. By that time, the forest might be gone, or she would be locked away somewhere that would make a return to Treegap and the spring more impossible. So, one day, a few weeks after the Tucks escaped from jail, Winnie snuck out of the house before dawn and ran for the spring.

Upon seeing it, she fell to her knees. Taking a palm full, she only paused for just a moment before gulping it down. The swallow was long and low. Miles had been right. The water did taste like heaven, floating over her tongue like a cloud.

She took another handful, then a third, just to be sure. Then Winnie sat back and waited. Perhaps she shouldn't expect to feel any different, anticipate the heavens opening up and angels coming down from on high to welcome her into their immortal ranks. Finally, she stood. She trusted the spring would do its work. 15 years old was not a bad age to be stuck as forever.

Then, Winnie took off running. Out of the forest, and out of Treegap.

She walked most of the way, daring not to hitchhike on some wagon, for fear that someone would recognize her, as surely by now her parents were searching for her all over again. Upon reaching Baltimore, Winnie stowed away on a boat without paying for steamship fare, bound for Europe. She ended up in France. The first thing she did, of course, was to climb the 1,652 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Here is where she would build her eternal life. Here is where she would wait for her beloved Jesse.

She waited. And waited. Winnie learned rudimentary French, but was aware enough of the lessons the Tucks taught her to master the art of seclusion. She became a sort of recluse, living out her ceaseless life in the French countryside. 1914 came and went. World War I broke out, but Winnie still remained in the rustic cottage she had built for herself. Only once did she flee her adopted homeland, during World War II in the 1940s; she feared if the Nazis took her prisoner, her secret would be revealed. She hid out in much safer Britain until the Third Reich was defeated, before returning to France.

Still, Jesse did not appear. Winnie kept zero contact with anyone, getting her news from the papers in town; it was about the only goods she risked buying. Everything else, she foraged for herself. Nature was always the best provider. Finally, sometime in the early 1970s, Winnie was going through the newspapers when she spotted an international bulletin, in the obituary section. Her father had finally passed away from grief, so the announcement said. Winnie was briefly mentioned, that she had vanished decades before and was now presumed dead. Her mother was not mentioned as surviving her husband, so Winnie figured she had died, too.

Winnie waited a little longer. The 1970s passed into the 1980s. Across the Atlantic, one President resigned in disgrace, two more were deposed in elections. The Berlin Wall finally came down.

It was suddenly the hot summer of 1990. On her television, Winnie observed Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait; watched as President George H.W. Bush vowed that such an aggression would not stand. All at once, Winnie decided that the end of the Cold War had not brought peace to Europe. She wanted to go home.

By now, she figured that no one who remembered her would still be alive in Treegap. And she was right. When she arrived in her old hometown for the first time in nearly eight decades, the place was much changed. Modern cars had replaced the wagons of yesteryear. Paved roads lay where dirt ones used to be. Brand-name storefronts – Starbucks, McDonald's – now reigned supreme on the streets. And most conspicuously of all, the forest had been razed. The spring was gone. Yet eerily enough, one of the few structures that had remained unchanged was Winnie's old mansion on the outskirts of town. There was no car in the driveway, and when Winnie peered in the windows, the rooms were dark and deserted. With the money she had saved in Europe, Winnie quickly bought the place for herself. She tried not to think of the amazement the Bank of America people felt at seeing a supposedly 15-year-old girl signing deeds for a property. But there was no suspicion floated, no probing questions asked – it left little doubt that anyone would even remember a Winnie Foster, much less recognize her. As she had in France, Winnie lived at her old childhood home in seclusion, only going into town for supplies when absolutely necessary.

The new Millennium fast approached. Winnie celebrated what would have been her 100th birthday in 1999. The 21st century arrived, and with it, a new President. Winnie marveled at how she was witnessing the trials of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, when she had been born during the reign of the 25th President, William McKinley.

9/11 happened. Winnie remembered reading about the first airplane flight of the Wright brothers as a toddler on her mother's lap. The memory now exacerbated her horror that the Wrights' invention had been turned into a weapon of mass murder. The war drums beat ominously, as the Bush administration quickly invaded Afghanistan; there were talks on the news of preparations to invade Iraq.

This was the present moment Winnie found herself in, that fall of 2002. As she did most mornings, she rose early to watch the sunrise, as Jesse had advised her to. Then, it was time to tend to her garden. As she plucked carrots and other vegetables, she didn't notice the fancy Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked at the end of her gravel walk.

But she _did_ hear what sounded like crying, coming from the other side of the house. Curious, Winnie paused in her work and strolled around to the back, a place she actually had yet to explore. Underneath a tree, she found a figure hunched over a slab of stone. He had long hair that almost reached his shoulders, and was cloaked in a fancy leather jacket. Peering over his shoulder, Winnie was shocked to find the figure sobbing over her grave. WINNIE FOSTER was printed in large letters along the stone. Her 1899 birth date was in view; her death date had been left blank. Had her parents erected this after losing all hope that she would ever be found?

"Oh, Winnie….. Winnie…"

Winnie gasped. She _knew_ that voice – a voice she thought she might never hear again. A voice that, even in this moment, swelled her heart.

"Jesse Tuck?"


	2. Chapter 2: Welcome to the Gods

**Chapter 2: Welcome to the Gods**

When the youth spun around, Winnie instantly recognized him. There were those same blue eyes that had haunted her dreams for nearly a century. There was the perfect, immaculate, unblemished face. Those rosy lips she had kissed once long ago, lips that had now fallen open in utter shock.

"Winnie?" Jesse whispered, and she half-expected him to ask if she was a ghost here to torment him further. "Is it really…..?"

Winnie could not stand it any longer. She leapt into Jesse's arms and kissed him. Upon the tangible, real feeling of her lips on his, Jesse clutched her closer, before springing away and cackling in triumph.

"Ha, ha! You _are_ real!"

Winnie smiled in amusement. "So are you. I've only been waiting for 88 years."

Jesse stared. "Here? But…. your parents…. what about…..?"

"I couldn't wait, Jesse. I drank from the spring in 1914, when I was still 15. They were going to send me to boarding school and I didn't know if I would find my way back to the wood….. After that, I ran. Stole away to Europe; I lived in France until the early '90s. Britain briefly during World War II."

"Did you say France?" Jesse asked, a twinkle alighting his eyes.

"Were you there?" Winnie inquired breathlessly. How could she have just missed seeing him?

But Jesse shook his head. "No. We went into hiding in South America after you busted us out. We were there for….. 40 years at least….." A thought struck him. "Did you climb the Eiffel Tower in France?"

Winnie beamed. "1,652 steps to the top."

"You remembered! I knew it! I just _knew_ you would drink from it!" Jesse crowed, picking up Winnie and spinning her about. Winnie threw her arms around his neck and shrieked with laughter. Setting her down, Jesse suddenly called over his shoulder. "Everyone! Come on out! Look who it is!"

Winnie stared as the rest of her precious Tucks ambled around from out front of the house. She hadn't even seen them.

"Jesse, what's wrong?" Angus Tuck stopped dead when he saw the little girl who had stolen into their hearts all those years ago. "Winnie?"

With shouts of joy, Winnie was hugging all of them too – even Miles. "You were nearby? Why didn't I notice you….?"

"Our wagon is parked just down the road," Miles explained. "Jesse came up to investigate alone." He looked beyond to Winnie's fake grave. "I must say, this is a delightful surprise."

"She's been here since the early 90s, Tuck," Jesse said eagerly. "And was in France and Britain all those years before that. Since we got out of jail."

Tuck looked between his son and the object of his love, brow creased in thought. Finally, he spoke. "Miles, get my gun." Miles dutifully ran to fetch it from the wagon.

Jesse stared in abject horror. "NO! What do you think you're doing?! She looks like she did the day we left! Isn't that enough?!"

"We need to make absolutely certain," Tuck said somberly. Miles now returned with the gun and handed it off to his father. Jesse lunged for Tuck.

"No! Tuck, what are you doing?!"

"Stay back, Jesse!" Tuck threw the boy off him, but when he came flying back, the patriarch yelled to Miles, "Hold him!"

Tuck loaded the cartridge and rose up the rifle's barrel. Winnie stayed frozen by the grave, calm as could be.

"Somebody stop him! Let me GO! Mae! Miles!" Jesse pleaded. But Miles refused to release his brother. Mae bit her lip, but remained silent.

Winnie looked over to her paramour. "Jesse…. It's gonna be OK. I love you!"

At her soothing voice, Jesse relaxed in Miles's grip, but only slightly. Facing down Tuck, Winnie closed her eyes. Tuck now took deadly aim. He squinted, before remembering the shooting lesson his father had taught him in Scotland centuries before. "Both eyes….. open….."

BANG! Tuck fired, and Winnie collapsed in a heap on the ground immediately, the bullet finding its mark directly over her heart. Despite confidence at the outcome, Jesse screamed and ran to his beloved's side. For a moment, all was silent. Then –

Winnie opened her eyes. She shakily stood, the sound of the gunshot ringing in her ears but otherwise completely unharmed.

Jesse burst into tears of relief and took Winnie in his arms, kissing her again and again. Smiling softly, Tuck approached and enveloped Winnie into a larger embrace.

"Welcome to the family, my daughter."

* * *

Winnie sold her family's large mansion, sending in the deeds by mail. Packing the things she had gathered over the decades, she and the Tucks disappeared into what little wilderness still remained around Maryland.

The Tucks' old cottage from the 1910s had been destroyed along with the forest and spring, but that didn't faze the immortal family. They simply found another plot of land, and built a new one. Here, under the trees, Jesse and Winnie conducted a simple wedding, exchanging rings and vows to love each other for all eternity. This was an alteration from the common phrase "Till death do us part," which, of course, would never happen.

Jesse and Winnie made love in their bed every night. The couple desperately wanted to have children, but tried as they might, they could not conceive. This caused Winnie much grief. Jesse placed the blame on himself, thinking himself a failure as he took long walks by himself through the wilderness.

The 2000s faded into the 2010s. A black man, Barack Obama, was elected the 44th President of the United States. Angus Tuck was amazed, as he could recall the time when black men were mere slaves. Now, one was in the White House. In the middle of that decade, Donald Trump, a vulgar businessman who had no political experience, succeeded Obama as President. Still, throughout such history, Winnie and Jesse kept trying to have babies.

At last, it was the spring of 2017. Winnie was technically 118 years old, Jesse was technically 207, and Miles was 212. At dinner one night, Winnie called for a family meeting. She turned to her husband.

"Jesse, I don't think I can have children. And I think the reason why is the spring. Being immortal, my body can't even go through the changes of pregnancy. I am stopped right where I was over a century ago."

Jesse nodded sadly. He had suspected as much, but had dared not bring up the possibility himself, for fear of breaking his wife's heart. The couple thought of Miles' children, Anna and Bo, long since dead. The eldest Tuck brother had sired them with a mortal woman sometime in the 1830s, but she had left him upon believing his changelessness to be the result of witchcraft.

Mae now took Winnie's hand from across the table. "Don't cry, child. You are still here with us. And we can still be a family – forever. You are ours, my sweet Winnie, and that's enough."

"Hear, hear!" Miles concurred.

Tuck just nodded his agreement. "It's as I told you all those years ago, Winnie. You don't have to live forever. You just have to live. But….." and here he added a new caveat. "If you do happen to live forever….. live anyway."

So Winnie did. So all the Tucks did – until the end of time itself.


End file.
